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Yesterday, I went to a fun football party. Not fun because of football, which I don’t understand nor have any desire to watch, but because it was with lots of old high school friends and included jello shots and Triscuits, my favorite things ever.

On the way home, the Goose was driving (as usual as it would threaten his masculinity otherwise) and I yelled “Stop! There’s a good one!” and we pulled over to bag up a juicy piece of roadkill.

Uh huh, roadkill. This is all because I had a black vulture waiting in the barn for me at home.

I don’t accept birds. I know almost nothing about them. I work with small mammals and deer. The only thing I know about birds is that if someone finds small birds on the ground NOT to move them, they haven’t fallen from the nest, they are fledglings and their mom is somewhere nearby in a panic because some fool is messing with her babies.

Even knowing nothing, I took this bird because some super nice people called me after striking out with 11 other rehabbers. I caved in and told them to bring him over. He was beautiful. I’ll admit that some of the vulture’s manners are less than perfect, but they really are cool birds. I called the bird guru, The Pagan Raptor Goddess, but she wasn’t taking vultures. She is a wealth of info and I always want to give a shout out to her organization, Hawktalk.org.

This morning, after having my hand shredded by this glorious creature, I finally got him down to Chattahoochee Nature Center. The only good thing about the bloody injury on my part was that my son’s friend with diabetes jumped forward and gave me a quickie blood test, which came out a little low but he suggested it was a left over jello shot problem. Saved me a $35 annual physical copay.

The good folks at the nature center, who do great work with wildlife and are responsible for sending me Tortellini and Tiki, our emu, were happy to take him and I felt great when I left. On my way home, top down, radio up, sun shining, I got the call that his wing was shattered and he was being euthanized at that moment.

Now, I’ve grown a thick skin over my years of rehab. I’ve had to put down lots of animals and my poor Goose has helped me with even more. It’s horrible but necessary. Some stories, though, just get to me. What got to me is that I had spent the entire ride telling this magnificent bird to just hold on, help was close by.

Of course, I KNOW he didn’t understand, I get that a bird that can’t fly will mentally fall apart and I accept that this was the only option. It just caused a deep sadness.

I spent the rest of the ride listening to depressing music, being angry at the drivers ahead of me, regardless of my new kind thoughts toward others, and thinking back over the sad cases I’ve had. I once had a summer when a virus took 7 of my little fawns. Only one survived. The last one, the smallest, writhed and screamed in my arms for an hour until I finally had to concede he wouldn’t make it. He whimpered and wept like a baby and I cried along with him. After that summer, I took the next year off from animals.

I know the sad losses I’ve seen cannot compare with the sadness of others. My friend who held her son while he passed away, the family that lost their sweet little girl a few weeks ago, the Trophy Wife’s friend who lost her 16 year old son just yesterday to an accident, these tragedies are beyond my comprehension.

Mine are just little sadnesses that cause a heart to get harder and stronger, but sometimes, a little crack appears like today and I spend a half an hour or so being mad at God and not understanding why animals, who are wholly good, have to suffer.

I don’t have an answer or an upbeat ending except to think that all the years I’ve spend in church I’ve heard Jesus’ quote that “in my Father’s house there are many mansions”. I don’t want a mansion. What I’m desperately hoping for is a big beautiful barn where the souls of all the precious creatures that I’ve lost are finally safe, happy and whole.

Recently I read a story about a deer stuck in a pond. The story ran in my favorite online newspaper, Cumming Patch. I mention this because they run my blogs and it would behoove everyone to pull them up and read them over there. (Those of you who remember Petey Pablo, disregard any similarity to “I’d like to give a shout out to Segram’s Gin – because I drink it, and they’re payin’ me for it”.)

The story was about a young doe trapped in a retention pond. Workers noticed her stuck in the frigid water, left her over the New Year’s holiday, and then called emergency services to come and rescue her on Wednesday. This leaves me speechless. At least someone called someone sometime and the little lady was finally pulled from the water and it is said she ran off, gratefully, into the woods.

I’m surprised I didn’t get the call on this one. I was out of town and wasn’t answering the phone, though, if they did call. I get a call from the county animal control, the police or someone with an animal emergency almost every day. Geese with broken wings, opossums in a drain pipe, fawns in a fence. It’s impossible for me to say no and but when I am called to come and collect something, say a pack of coyotes, I do sometimes answer these people with the statement “I’m just one girl”.

What I started out to do is raise babies, not really rescue the big guys. Still, my entire family has lived the last ten years in the middle of creature crisis. Years ago, my son, The Boy, once held a giant vulture in his lap all the way to a baseball game, played the game and then was forced to hold him again on the way home. It’s a lot to ask of an 8 year old. We once had such a rambunctious young buck in the car that it took both of my kids to hold him still in the back seat, ducking hooves, until we could get him home and look him over. We lost a baby opossum in the Ritz Carlton at the beach and all hell ensued until we found her. The first time my friend, The Trophy Wife met my little boy he had two tiny fang sized scabs on the sides of his nose. When she asked him what happened he explained that he was bitten by a snake. He then went on to tell her that his mother asked him to hold still with the dangling snake on his nose while she went to get a camera. Amazingly, she still became my friend. We’ve traveled with ground hogs, squirrels, raccoons, you name it. If they needed to be fed, they went along with us. It’s been a trip, to say the least.

I love the stories in the news that end up like this one about the deer. If you google animal rescue stories, there are great ones every day. From people taking in stray dogs to countries building land bridges over freeways so wildlife can cross without injury. My own sweet Dad once stole a dog right out of someone’s fence because he saw it being horribly mistreated. It was the only thing I ever knew of that he did “wrong” and nothing shows more heart.

Raising deer has been one of the best things in my life. They’re like doberman pinschers in they don’t show much facial expression. But like the dogs, they are super intelligent, loving and funny. This is why I get so worked up about deer hunters. There is no difference in hunting deer and hunting dogs, but I won’t get into that here. The fawns I’ve raised have had such weird, individual personalities that I remember each one fondly, just like a teacher remembers her students. I remember their names, their quirks and I hope for the best for them out there in the “big free world”. And if they happen to come across a human, and I hope they don’t, I pray it’s someone with a beautiful soul like these rescue guys.

I think a heart for animals shows there is hope left in humanity. The thought of these men on the emergency crew, standing in the cold, wading in the freezing water and spending hours to save one sweet little doe, that others would gladly get pleasure from shooting, warms my heart. It’s my personal believe that one day we’ll all stand before God and he’ll be so happy about the fact that we loved and protected his beautiful creatures that he’ll overlook all the swearing at other drivers, the gossiping about our in-laws and the possible, eh, probable overindulgences with wine. Take a minute and let that opossum or squirrel cross the road. It’ll do you both some good.

I’m not a brilliant person. I think really smart people have a lot of headaches so I try to enjoy each and every day, laugh a lot and let the big things go. Really, I laugh a LOT and consider myself mildly funny, married to the Golden Goose, who is really funny and avoid serious stuff like the plague. Like changing oil in the car or rotating tires, it’s just not fun and I avoid it. Thankfully, I have the Goose or I’d be in a pickle.

I am deeply lodged inside my Lilly Pulitzer colored world and probably needed what I got a while back. I got a good lesson in not judging a book by it’s cover. Or not judging a man by his looks. I could continue this thread on down by not judging a woman by her shoes, but let’s not get crazy here.

I get a lot of calls from people who have found injured or orphaned animals. I must admit that when I started 10 years ago, I loved these calls. I would talk and talk to the nice folks who were calling and by the time they left after dropping the critter off, I’d know everything about them, would have walked them around the barnyard, introducing them to each and every one of my animals and they would know the most minute and intimate details of my life from my childhood to my recent botox injection. Now, when they call and begin the sentence, “hello? I got your number from …” and they start to fumble for where they found me I am already sighing and interrupting with “what do you have?”. I guess the shine wears off anything after a while but I must say that middle-age has made me, well, snippy sometimes. This has caused an uptick in wine consumption, which, in turn, has caused more wrinkles and more calories.

Anyhoooo, a while back, I was in the middle of a particularly crazy day. I do have a real life, as a designer, and sometimes still manage to get dressed up and work with people. This day, I was clean, had had coffee (those who know me are nodding and saying “nuff said” here) and was running out of the house when I got a call from a man who proceeded to stammer through his problem while I twisted and fidgeted thought his long explanation. I agreed to wait. It seems he had found a baby opossum and had driven it all the way up to Amicolola, about 40 miles from me. They then told him to take it to Gainesville, another 40, at least. They gave him my name and he headed back my way. This man called me at least 3 times on the way, shouting at me over the phone while I, again, gave him directions, articulating and snapping like an angry governess.

When this man finally arrived I was shocked. He drove through my lovely gates in the biggest beater of a car I’ve ever seen. The doors were not the same color as the rest of the car. There was no back window. The man who emerged was dirty. Filthy. Encrusted in dirt. His hair stood out at all angles and, when he smiled, there were a good many teeth missing and the ones remaining were, well, dark. In his shirt, against his body, he had a tiny opossum curled up snug and warm. When the man spoke, he was slow and quiet and I realized that when he had called all those times, it must have been from pay phones. He trembled a bit as he handed over the baby and explained that he was so sorry it had taken so long, he had had to go by his sister’s to get some gas money. He then tried to give me four crumpled up bills to help pay for food.

Now, it takes a lot to get to me. I see a lot of sweet things die, I see horrible injuries and have learned to grit my teeth and just move on. My eyes filled with tears and I looked down at my fabulous shoes, in my pretty yard, by my nice car and in the shadow of my comfortable home. Here was a man that people probably look away from in public out of fear or disgust. He had nothing and had had to borrow the money as he drove about 150 miles in the hopes of saving what most people consider a disgusting rodent (do I really have to add here, again, that opossums are marsupials, just like kangaroos?). He then offered to help pay for his care, something that most people that drop off animals in Mercedes and BMWs never even consider. He said he had worried all morning about keeping him warm and making sure he had a good chance. How many men would take the time to do this? This isn’t the funniest of stories and about as deep as I go, but I think about him all the time. How ironic that he had brought an opossum, the least attractive of animals but among the sweetest, who just go along their way, eating everything and cleaning up the world. Sometimes I think we get in our own ruts and form opinions that build fences that keep out the good things. Just like the little ‘possum, this man was a shining jewel inside a worn out box. Love lives inside the most unattractive of God’s creatures. That man was certainly my lesson for the day and shame, shame, shame on me for needing it!

Everything has a season. As a native Atlantan I come by this knowledge naturally. I was lucky enough to have a mother who knew the right way to do everything and did it better than anyone else, bless their ignorant northern hearts. Not just the rules about white shoes and not only how to work a seating chart and correct place settings. I’m talking the subtle things like what to wear at the funeral of a second wife that may or may not have been hanging in the wings shortly before the demise of the first. When frosted lipstick is okay (never), when to take someone a casserole (at the first sign of a sneeze) and when a glass of wine is okay (never, it’ll send you straight to Hell). Obviously, though I was reared properly, some of this just didn’t take. Still, I love the idea that certain things belong at certain times of the year. June, for me, means straw purses, Lilly Pulitzer skirts and fawns. I get calls from well meaning people who find “orphaned” fawns. “It was all alone, it’s mother left it!” they bleat over the phone. They call after the poor little thing is weak and sick and after they’ve crammed milk down it’s throat for days and wonder why it’s sick. Mother deer leave their babies alone all day. The babies have no scent and can’t run fast yet so they snuggle up under a plant and just blend in. They are so camouflaged that sometimes when I’m standing right next to one even I miss it. So, I received these sick little kidnapped babies while I envision their mothers pining for them and wondering what happened. Still, I enjoy the little sweeties and get a kick out of raising a healthy wild buck or doe to be released in the fall. I’ve raised lots of babies and all have gone well except one. Every mother knows her weak link. This is the brilliant kid who will climb up into your skirt when a sweet little old lady talks to her at the grocery store. The kid who follows you constantly, breathing heavily by the bathroom door until you’re done. The one who wants you to come eat lunch with her at school – in 10th grade. I had a deer like that named Zippy. She just couldn’t separate. While the others romped and played reindeer games, she walked from door to door around the outside of my house, just trying to catch a glimpse of me. When the others left to go live their lives, she would sneak back in through the gate, climb up the stairs and flop down in deep depression by the door until I emerged and she could gaze, rapt, at me.

The final straw came when my husband, The Golden Goose, came home from work in suit and fabulous tie and flopped down on the bed for a moment. Everyone knows that if a man remains horizontal for any amount of time, without a woman present, he will immediately go to sleep. Zippy, ever on constant vigil, saw an opportunity through the french doors, maneuvered them open with her nose and crept into the bedroom and onto the bed to spoon with him. The Golden Goose puts up with a lot, I’ll admit. Life is, well, unusual at our house. He tries so hard to stay unaffected and above it all, but this occasion proved to be too much. Although he remained stoic while I heaved and pushed the full grown doe off our custom bedding and across the pristine carpet, he did have the wherewithal to mummer “not tonight, dear” before he closed his eyes again.

Zippy was soon trailered off my property and happily released elsewhere. Although she doesn’t write home often, I know she’s thinking of me.